Saturday 28 January 2012

OPINION: Do we all, deep down, play for points?

I got asked an interesting question a few days ago.  If arrests were worth 1 point and kills were worth 5, would arrests become extinct from the game?  Obviously in the ViP game, you would still need to arrest to achieve a team objective, but the number of overall arrests would undoubtedly decrease massively if this was how the point system worked.

In my early days I used to be a point-hungry player, arresting whenever I could, even if I was a suspect and the ViP was about to reach the exit point, or an officer and the ViP was captured. I got a lesson one day on how this was the wrong way of playing, and it was a harsh one.  But it was what I needed to change me into a proper player. Now though, I see so many things people do which make me wonder if we still all actually deep-down play the game to impress others regarding our points total and the famous "points per minute" average.

I'll give you an example. If you click "Start New Game" in the admin menu, all the statistics regarding points don't get registered by GameTracker. Funny then, that when an admin fails to get too many points in a round, you will see a quick round start occur on many, many occasions.  This way, the poor points total (compared to time spent) will not get tracked.  If you haven't noticed it before, just visit a typical ViP clan server and look closely at how an admin acts to a disappointing round.  

Another trick is changing the name.  Whatever nickname you have used as the round finishes, that is the nickname that GameTracker will register your points total against. A classy response I see to an accident ViP kill and -50 points is to simply change your name quickly before the round ends - that way again, your stats aren't affected. Infact, I have seen some players from polish clans, such as CoB and Polish Legion, that force themselves into view so that their name changes from <Name> to <Name>(VIEW), hence making sure that their registered GT nickname does not encounter a negative points deduction.

Another thing is why do so many people gang around the ViP when his timer is about to end? Is it honestly because they to want to win the round for the team (surely you'll win anyway if you have 5 sus ready to kill already), or is it more because it's a free and easy 10 points to kill him? Moreover, why do people get so angry if you kill or steal an arrest?  Surely it's the same thing if you spray someone, equip your primary to kill him, but another teammate gets ahead of you and kills him first? But we never see people complain about that.

Of course, for the Barricaded Suspects mode, it's all about accumulating points for the team, so it's forgivable to find players like that over there.  But in ViP and RD, when you see the extent to which people go to ensure their points total isn't harmed, you do really wonder whether 'playing for fun' is just a fake thing which rarely occurs.

~Observer